Mummy found in cof­fin dur­ing ex­ca­va­tion of an­cient Luxor tomb

The Egyp­tian Min­istry of An­tiq­ui­ties has an­nounced the new dis­cov­ery of a royal tomb at a tem­ple in the an­cient city of Luxor, the of­fi­cial Mena news agency re­ported.

MENA quoted Mah­moud Afifi, head of the An­cien­tE­gyp­tian An­tiq­ui­ties De­part­ment of the min­istry, as say­ing that the tomb of King Thut­mose III was found near the south­ern wall of the Mil­lions of Years Tem­ple by a group of Span­ish archaeologists.

Afifi added that the Span­ish mis­sion, who be­gan to dig at the site in 2008, found a cof­fin con­tain­ing a mummy in very good con­di­tion in­side the tomb and that the ini­tial stud­ies in­di­cated the re­mains were of a royal house ser­vant named Amen­renef.

This would date the tomb back to the Pharaonic Third In­ter­me­di­ate Pe­riod around 1,000 years B.C.

Sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ery

“The mis­sion will do in-depth stud­ies of the tomb and its con­tents to find out more about its owner,” Afifi toldMena.

Myr­iam Seco Al­varez, an Egyp­tol­o­gist and head of the Span­ish mis­sion, said that the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­cov­ery lies in the mummy found in­side the cof­fin, “as it con­tains­many col­ored or­na­ments and car­ries a group of re­li­gious sym­bols from an­cient Egypt.”

She said the in­scrip­tions in­cluded the god­desses Isis and Neph­thys with their wings spread and the four sons of godHorus.

Luxor, of­ten called the “world’s great­est open-air mu­seum” be­cause of the num­ber of tombs, tem­ples and

(The cof­fin) con­tains many col­ored or­na­ments and car­ries a group of re­li­gious sym­bols from an­cient Egypt.” Egyp­tol­o­gist

Myr­iam Seco Al­varez, mon­u­ments in the area, was named by the United Na­tions World Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion as the World Tourism Cap­i­tal for 2016.